Bitch Slapped by Google?

this happened to me also, WITHOUT any black hat, I don't know why

yeah i sure will. Its a bitch and i'm really pissed about it, I had some bad advice and cant believe I was stupid enough to put links on sites like I did.

I also have a diversity issue like you so im gonna start creating some web 2.0 with decent content and using a shit load of diverse backlinks.

Interestingly, I could of just swapped all the paid links i had over to my competitors and watch them all suffer, they would of had no idea how to remove them, im just not that kind of guy but google is making it too easy.

elvis 1973 just posted this link to search engine land which is pretty interesting about how many messages they sent out to webmasters: http://searchengineland.com/google-...via-webmaster-tools-in-past-two-months-113807

kind of makes me think, the message i received was automated...

Sorry to hear!

There is one bright spot to report - I have lost about 70% of my traffic due to this penalty, but I have only lost about 30% of my sales. I have an e-commerce site and I have built a brand name so I am thinking this has helped.

My site serves a super niche that is really small in the whole scheme of things, but there is still a good volume of traffic in this niche.

Hey guys,

This guy Terry Kyle is the owner of homepagebacklinks.com, and he created this video/slide presentation explaining how his entire HPBL network was de-indexed. He goes on to explain why HPBL's are now dead.

Take a look, its a good listen and something to learn from: http://sundayseo.s3.amazonaws.com/l7123q5/sundayseo-26feb-2012.html

He goes on to further explain the types of penalties you could experience if your links were caught on these types of HPBL's and it sounds spot on in my case as I did have my links on HPBLs.

He pitches his new service at the end, but whatever...

My biggest worry is that the penalty I have received is not a time limited penalty...If it is a penalty that will not expire, I should move to a new url asap and this is something I will not know until 3-6 months from now...

Luckily for me, I am still converting sales, but I would rather know one way or the other so I could move on or not...who knows...it doesn't seem anyone knows, maybe I will know in the future...

Stop focusing on amount of backlinks and start focusing on quality of backlinks. lot of websites that SERP's drop instantly and dramatically is because of google finding unnatural links. This wont happen if you are only purchasing high quality backlinks. I have never bought a backlinking service that offers more then 100 backlinks at once and I have never had such drops. Best of luck gettin back!

scorpion896 said:

Stop focusing on amount of backlinks and start focusing on quality of backlinks. lot of websites that SERP's drop instantly and dramatically is because of google finding unnatural links. This wont happen if you are only purchasing high quality backlinks. I have never bought a backlinking service that offers more then 100 backlinks at once and I have never had such drops. Best of luck gettin back!

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I agree with you 100%...

I'm glad that you didn't loose all your sales after the update. 30% is a big chunk but it could have been worst.

maxonix said:

I'm glad that you didn't loose all your sales after the update. 30% is a big chunk but it could have been worst.

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Yeah, 30% hurts, but its not the end of the world. I have some money saved so I think I can endure the length of the penalty (if/when penalty is no more).

I believe I was caught using these high pr home page back links and if this is the case, I don't see how google could permanently punish the site. This seems like cruel and unusual punishment and I know many people like to curse google, but I don't think they set out to be cruel and unusual.

2 of my sites have been hit by this and i have seen weird changes in my SERPS.

Here is what happened.

Site 1 - dropped from #6 to #10, this site had been consistently rising month on month for over 6 months from #56, around 2 weeks ago i added some paid PR blog rolls, and then got the GWT notice on 26th Feb.

I then checked all my rankings for this site (over 1300 of them) and noticed a big decline overall, strange thing, it was mainly on long tail stuff. I then removed the blog roll posts, there was about 30 of them on pr4 and pr5 sites. Sent re-inclusion request saying that some shitty SEO company had done it without my authorisation and I would make sure it never happened again.

The keyword that was at position #6 was linking to a deep URL, this has now dropped even further to #16 but the home page is now being ranked at #9 for the same keyword, this was at #14 last week. So its like the URLs have almost swapped places. So basically deep link URL has moved down, and home page URL has moved up.

All blog links where on deep URL.

Site 2 - added the Blog roll links at same time as site 1, removed them after getting GWT warning. No obvious loss of position across any tracked ranking as of yet (over 1200+ tracked keywords), some have dropped 1 -5 positions but many have gone up, nothing that you wouldnt expect in a normal month to month shift.

So two very different sites, 2 very different niches and 2 very different outcomes after getting the warning.

Im watching things very closely but site 1 as LOTS of red decrease arrows when I check results in Rank tracker, most of the kws are saying -5 to -25 etc.

sorry forgot to add.

Site 1 - Re-inclusion request was blaming it on SEO company who did it without my auth.

Site 2 - Re-inclusion request said I have never built any links either paid or otherwise so it must be a competitor who is trying to harm my rankings and asking google if they can confirm if this is possible so that I can consider legal action

thought i would try two different approaches to see what/if any response I get.

I'm interested to know how they respond to you b/c if it was an algorithmic penalty they will tell you there is no penalty against you, but if manual they will come back with a different response.

so I'm really interested to see the response.

elvis1973 said:

sorry forgot to add.

Site 1 - Re-inclusion request was blaming it on SEO company who did it without my auth.

Site 2 - Re-inclusion request said I have never built any links either paid or otherwise so it must be a competitor who is trying to harm my rankings and asking google if they can confirm if this is possible so that I can consider legal action

thought i would try two different approaches to see what/if any response I get.

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elvis1973 said:

sorry forgot to add.

Site 1 - Re-inclusion request was blaming it on SEO company who did it without my auth.

Site 2 - Re-inclusion request said I have never built any links either paid or otherwise so it must be a competitor who is trying to harm my rankings and asking google if they can confirm if this is possible so that I can consider legal action

thought i would try two different approaches to see what/if any response I get.

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Re-inclusion to what - your site was not de-indexed. Re-inclusion requests are for sites that have been permanently removed from search results by google. There is a video by Google about requesting re-inclusion and they basically state that bs requests are a dime a dozen and they simply just ignore them. They say that you should either own up to the reason why you have been de-indexed and state the steps you are taking to remedy them or be as specific as possible in describing what you think happened. My guess is your request gets a two second glance and then is ignored then they get your second request and figure out you are bullshitting them.

You can get penalized by google and not be de-indexed.

Look at the cases of JC Penny and Overstock.com. JC Penny received a 90 day penalty and Overstock.com received a 60 day penalty, but overstock submitted a re-inclusion request after 45 days and were approved as they removed the spammy links that got them in trouble. Neither of these two sites were de-indexed, they were only penalized.

Its really all about if you received a manual penalty or algorithmic penalty. My guess is that most of us are receiving algorithmic penalties and the google algorithm is automatically sending out these messages to our webmaster tools account.

If you receive an algorithmic penalty, a re-inclusion request will not help, but in this case, google should respond by saying there is no penalty to the re-inclusion request. But, this even gets confusing b/c if you received a message into your webmaster tools account then you know there some sort of penalty.

Panda 3.3 changes some of the assumptions that we thought we knew.

sammyd said:

Re-inclusion to what - your site was not de-indexed. Re-inclusion requests are for sites that have been permanently removed from search results by google. There is a video by Google about requesting re-inclusion and they basically state that bs requests are a dime a dozen and they simply just ignore them. They say that you should either own up to the reason why you have been de-indexed and state the steps you are taking to remedy them or be as specific as possible in describing what you think happened. My guess is your request gets a two second glance and then is ignored then they get your second request and figure out you are bullshitting them.

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I'm still trying to figure this thread out - Are you giving lectures here on working around the latest algorithm changes or are you QQ'ing because you just got bitch-slapped for failing?

I dont mean to come across an arse, but i'm struggling to find any educational value in this thread. Seems my input would seem pointless, due to the fact it was initially a cry for help, OP did a Shang Tsung by the 5th page and now hes Matt Cutts

/confused

I think that when your website gets hit by an algo penalty you should change your SEO method and remove the backlinks that it might have caused the penalty in the first place. In elvis1973's case he removed the blog rolls he created two weeks ago and his website return near its original ranking position. Although his website lost the #6 position, it is now on page 1 once again.

In this thread I have always taken responsibility for the seo that I created.

I started this thread to see if other people were seeing the same thing I was seeing and I was trying to get any advice on dealing with penalties.

Over the past three weeks, I have learned many things about penalties and what I have learned I have tried to share here.

If you have not received any educational value from this thread, thats ok.

darkfury said:

I'm still trying to figure this thread out - Are you giving lectures here on working around the latest algorithm changes or are you QQ'ing because you just got bitch-slapped for failing?

I dont mean to come across an arse, but i'm struggling to find any educational value in this thread. Seems my input would seem pointless, due to the fact it was initially a cry for help, OP did a Shang Tsung by the 5th page and now hes Matt Cutts

/confused

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